1. Synth lead (probably a monophonic saw wave with some portamento) + Vocoder and Human Voice

2. Synth Lead (as above) + Formant Filters.

In either case, you want to impart the spectral quality of the human voice by using some filtering that imparts the shape of human vowel sounds onto a source sound - in this case, a synthesizer lead. Most DAWs have a built in vocoder, so you could experiment by recording yourself going "Oooh" and "yeah" and "Woah" and whatnot to get the formants you want, or you could use a third party formant filter like sugarbytes Wow, or the KiloHearts formant filter (or just draw your own - look up formant EQ curves and experiment!) and achieve a result that I believe is what was actually used. But vocoding might still be fun.

This is really fun! I'm giving it a listen on laptop speakers but it sounds like you put a lot of effort into this! There are a lot of great melodies and the atmosphere you create is very lush and spacious.

I'll give it another listen after I get some sleep, but I think you should be proud of what you did! I think in the future, you can look for ways to preview the dubstep elements earlier in the song, then for the dubstep drop have them work as some form of call and response with your chords - go watch Virtual Riot's streams on youtube where he makes Lunar to see what I mean.

I can definitely second anything from KiloHearts or Polyverse; absolutely some of my favorite plugins to work with come from these developers (fun fact - Polyvese is owned by Infected Mushroom, hence why they promote all their stuff!).

While not exactly underrated, VPROM is a secret weapon for a number of producers, including Mat Zo and Above & Beyond - it's a very authentic recreation of the Linndrum drum machine, which is perfect for house, trance, pop, etc.

Gonna sticky this because Pzychosis is awesome for doing this. I'm going to be contributing sounds for this sample pack a well, so if there's anything you're looking for from a TPF sample pack, definitely let us know!

As I said - the only changes from major to minor are the quality of the chords. I gave you the symbols for the chords of Natural Minor, and you can just re-draw the triangle and replace them. The function of the chords remains the same, and you can follow the exact same rules.

I didn't link the diagram, but the changes from major to minor are only in how those chords are labeled, not what number they are.

Just to give a quick primer on reading roman numeral chords - capital is major, lower case is minor. If there's a degree sign (°) next to the lower case, it's a diminished chord. If there's a plus sign (+) next to the upper case, it's an augmented chord.

I also try to avoid that sort of chord flow chart because, as the label on it says, it's a "simple" map and adheres to a very rigid order that isn't always followed.

For beginners, I actually prefer something my harmony teacher gave us that he called the function triangle -

It works similarly to the flow chart, but imo feels less restrictive in your options while adhering to the same concepts. All you need to do is follow 3 rules.

1. Start on I. You may jump from I to any chord, or jump from any chord on one side to any chord on the same side (you can jump between ii, IV, and vi as much as you want, and between iii, V, and vii° as much as you want - unless you land on V).2. You may move clockwise by one side (From I to ii/IV/vi, from ii/IV/vi to iii/V/vii°, or from iii/V/vii° to I), but you cannot (until you learn how) move backwards.3. When you get to V, you have to go to I.

Obviously there are exceptions and variations on this, but if you follow that chart you'll never get lost. Once you get comfortable with it, you can experiment with things like tricking people by going from V to vi instead of I!

There are two big things to consider when thinking about gain staging, particularly with regards to heavier genres like Dubstep, Trap, and Bass House -

First, a lot of these songs are mixed with a mastering chain already on, which influences how you level balance the various elements of your mix. Dubstep especially is a genre where Louder Is Better, and if you're mixing into an empty master channel you're just not getting the stylistic impression that can inform your decisions. If you just slap the Glue Compressor's "Mastering - Make It Loud" preset and a limiter with 3 to 6 dB of gain on your master channel before you do anything, you'll be able to get closer to that balance you're looking for. Then, when you're done you can just turn off your temporary mastering chain, use the Utility plugin's gain to adjust the master output so your highest peak is under 0 dB (or whatever reference level you wish to use; i use -3 to -6 but it's mostly irrelevant), and bounce your premaster for a more focused mastering job.

Second, a lot of these sounds are processed in such a way that they're already loud to begin with - both in terms of the samples used (Cymatics heavily saturates and compresses their samples, so there's less processing involved compared when you're using a more basic sample) and how they've distorted and compressed the synthesizers. There are a ton of different ways to go about it, but generally you want some form of compression (either on the individual sound or a group of sounds), some type of harmonic saturation (overdrive, saturation, distortion, etc), and a special place in the stereo field - through stereo imaging or simple panning.